Elsevier’s profits swell to more than £900M

Next to Equifax, and Wells Fargo, this is the company I’d most like to see metaphorically burned to the ground. Wells Fargo at least provides a service, albeit corruptly, but Equifax and Elsevier are just holes in the ground that eat money.

Edit: What does it mean that my comment is automatically collapsed?

paulie_a• 8 years ago

In the case of wells Fargo it wasn't just corruption but outright fraud. Hundreds of people should have been brought up on criminal charges for the last of their many scandals

IntronExon2• 8 years ago

That’s a good point, of course in the last decade the DoJ is all about not prosecuting, and just collecting fines. Sad state of affairs which must change.

AtomicOrbital• 8 years ago

All publicly funded research should be freely available to the public ... its sad academics have allowed themselves to become enslaved by parasitic publishers ... academics must launch a full court massive grassroots revolt away from publishing their research at such journals ... a short term period of chaos during the transition period over to open journals is a small price to pay for such freedom

lewis5003• 8 years ago

Scholars can often make their work free via pre-print. The issue is that the published version isn't free, and the pre-print is hard to find and often not as nice looking.

I made a github repo of my last paper published in an Elsevier journal. This was cool because I could put the latex and simulation code for others to copy. https://github.com/lewis500/distribution-of-trip-lengths

The final version differs a little bit because they had a copy-editor go through and make some good improvements, even after the referees made their comments. Interestingly, the journal was fine with my linking to the repo within the text of the paper, as a way to share the code.

There is nothing like real open access though. This journal has wonderful typesetting and such and is totally free: https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/835/860

It's funny what tricks they use to justify their existence. Always emailing me about bizarre author features no one will use. Makes me sad to think of the engineers sitting in a big room year-on-year polishing features no one will use.

horsecaptin2• 8 years ago

It is free if they get publish by PLOS.

AndrewGYork2• 8 years ago

In the same spirit, our lab is experimenting with a new approach to scientific publishing via Github: https://twitter.com/AndrewGYork/status/965765089373515776

No paywall, no delay, straight to the web. Open data, open code, interactive/animated figures. Transparent, rolling peer review, version control, CC-BY license, citable DOIs. I was worried no one would read it, but it turns out science twitter is awesome. Very positive experience, so far.

btrettel• 8 years ago

PhD student here.

I think refusing to transfer copyright is a better option in fields that have no open access journals, like my field. While I haven't published in a journal yet, the discussions I had with a few representatives of publishers at a conference suggested that some publishers will accept only a license to print if you ask. One publisher even showed me an example of an article where they did not own the copyright.

Pre-prints are also a good option, but you won't own the changes made in review if you transfer copyright (for a journal that is not open access).

greeneggs5• 8 years ago

There are many examples of articles where the publisher does not own the copyright; any article written by US government scientists is not subject to copyright.

Preprints are an excellent option, and every field should make distributing preprints at the standard servers (Arxiv, Biorxiv, etc.) the norm. The broad visibility from open preprint servers seems to be evolving into a different kind of peer review, to the extent that if, in my field, I see a published article with no arXiv preprint I wonder if the authors are trying to hide something.

iamleppert• 8 years ago

It’s not that easy. They own the network. It’s like saying “It’s a shame we have allowed Verizon and AT&T to own all our communication.”

They own infrastructure and cell towers and such but these publishers own mindshare and they have people’s attention and that’s the whole point. You’re not going to risk your career and publish in some unknown journal (for most people). Sad but true.

landryraccoon2• 8 years ago

You’re not going to risk your career and publish in some unknown journal (for most people).

If this is true it reflects poorly on academia and science (insofar as science is an organized activity). Shouldn’t research be judged by its own merits, and the results it produces against verifiable goals and not the popularity contest of competing journals? IMHO to the extent that what you are saying is true, it’s honestly understandable and a little justified that the public is skeptical of academic science. You’re saying it’s in large part a popularity contest.

jpeloquin• 8 years ago

In the US, all research funded by the National Institutes of Health must be made publicly available on PubMed Central after a delay of up to 12 months (https://publicaccess.nih.gov/). This is a good thing, but no embargo would be so much better.

It's difficult to change this situation because the journal subscription fees are paid from university budgets and are invisible to academics. Authors and editors benefit from affiliation with prestigious journals' brands. The university library system and the taxpayer pays the cost. Academics also pay a cost in wasted time wrestling with journal paywalls, but that will go away only decades after a complete switch to open access. Open Access is definitely the right thing to do, but the economic incentives are aligned against it. Since there are ~ 300 applicants per open faculty position these days every bit of self-promotion is perceived to be life-or-death for one's career.

candiodari• 8 years ago

News like this, despite more than a decade of regulatory and protests against their locking up of scientific knowledge, really gives one faith in our collective ability to influence policy. Apparently that doesn't even work on the very local level.

Really gives one faith in what will happen with things like global warming policy, or economic cooperation.

tischler• 8 years ago

It is basically the prisoner's dilemma. The free publication platforms do not yet have prestige because few prestigious researchers publish there; but only few prestigious researchers publish on free publication platforms because they are not prestigious enough.

The only way to overcome a prisoner's dilemma is education and trust.

make32• 8 years ago

I'm computer science, everyone is publishing on arxiv.org . why can't other fields?

choco_leonidas• 8 years ago

Sometimes it can be intimidating to see the resources and lobbying power that these behemoths have. They have a vested interest in keeping the status quo.

At the same time I'm inspired by projects like Discrete Analysis (http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/) and Fermat's Library (https://fermatslibrary.com/) - there are actually a lot of smart, well intentioned folks pushing for a move towards more openness and collaboration in science and research.

ocschwar2• 8 years ago

As part of my work, I've had t o read (and implement in code) papers from Elsevier journals.

The authors included Chinese, Turkish and Slavic people. And I didn't even have to look at their 35 dollars for a paper when they don;t even have the decency to help authors with some English copy editing.

ocschwar2• 8 years ago

Dammit, the browser mangled my comment.

Fixing:

The authors included Chinese, Turkish and Slavic people. Not all of them could write well in English. And I didn't even have to look at their names to guess nationality, because they would have English grammar mistakes that would make it clear what their native language was.

I really resent paying 35 dollars for a PDF from a company that can't even do some copy editing to help such authors. Elsevier has no respect for the researchers or their readers.

truculation• 8 years ago

It's pretty weird that 25 years into the internet age we have students paying through the nose to attend university and universities paying through the nose to subscribe to publications.

Elsevier’s profits swell to more than £900M

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